Avatar
Avatar is a Sci-Fi movie made in 2009. It was directed by James Cameron. The film stars are: Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a disabled former Marine who becomes part of the Avatar Program after his twin brother is killed. His military background helps the Na'vi warriors relate to him. Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the head of the mining operation's security detail. Fiercely loyal to his military code, he has a profound disregard for Pandora's inhabitants that is evident in both his actions and his language. Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, an exobiologist and head of the Avatar Program. She is also Sully's mentor and an advocate of peaceful relations with the Na'vi, having set up a school to teach them English. Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, the daughter of the leader of the Omaticaya (the Na'vi clan central to the story). She is attracted to Jake because of his bravery, though frustrated with him for what she sees as his naiveté and stupidity. Plot In the year 2154, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former U.S. Marine paralyzed from the waist down due to wounds sustained in combat, is selected to participate in the Avatar Program. Originally, the position was supposed to be filled by his identical twin brother Tom Sully, who was recently killed by a man who attempted to rob him of his money. Arriving from the six-year journey from Earth to Pandora, Jake awakes from cryosleep with hundreds of other personnel to work at the human colony on this inhabited moon of Polyphemus, one of three fictional gas giants orbiting Alpha Centauri A. Jake meets with Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a hardened and seasoned military veteran who is in charge of security on the colony. Quaritch welcomes the new personnel and military soldiers and briefs them on Pandora. It is mostly covered with lush rainforests and wildlife, and home to the primitive Na'vi, a sentient race of tall, blue-skinned humanoids. The colony personnel and military are under the jurisdiction of the Resources Development Administration (RDA), a non-governmental organization back on Earth. Jake is introduced to Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), a biologist who arrived on the same rotation of personnel as he did and Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), a botanist as well as the leader of the Avatar Program, which allows humans to control avatars, which are genetically engineered human-Na’vi hybrids who look like Na'vi. Using the avatars, Grace and her team have made some considerable progress teaching some Na’vi their ways and English as well as learning their language and culture. Grace is not pleased with RDA administrator Parker Selfridge's (Giovanni Ribisi) decision to use Jake to replace his brother’s avatar position, as she will have to spend time training him in Na’vi culture as well as teaching him how to control his avatar. Parker stresses that the RDA needs to mine the extremely valuable mineral unobtanium, which can be found in huge deposits on Pandora. Meanwhile, Quaritch makes Jake his informant to gather information on the Na’vi and their home, the Hometree (kelutral), which has huge deposits of unobtanium buried deep below its surface. He wants Jake to gain their trust and convince them to leave their home within three months. After being trained for several weeks in his new body, Jake, Grace and Norm explore the native wildlife with Trudy Chacon (Michelle Rodriguez), a retired Marine pilot who is assigned to ferry them to their location. While Grace and Norm study the wildlife, Jake encounters a group of hammerhead titanotheres, a rhinoceros-like animal species. However, the titanotheres flee from a thanator (palulukan), a terrifying land predator. Grace shouts at her group to flee. Jake runs from the thanator, who is after him, and loses most of his equipment and weapon in the process. He narrowly escapes death from the predator and falls into raging rivers below. As darkness falls, Jake creates a fire torch using a sap substance on the trees, and once more runs and fights a large group of small sized viperwolves (nantang). A female Na’vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) rescues him and kills several of the viperwolves before they all flee. Neytiri is at first angry with Jake for having caused her to kill the viperwolves needlessly and leaves him. Jake goes after Neytiri, who tells him not to follow as she knows he is an avatar hybrid - a dreamwalker from the Sky People. Jake is caught by her fellow Na’vi, but Neytiri defuses the situation by telling her people that she witnessed him being chosen by the seeds of Eywa, a spiritual entity that the Na’vi worship, which indicate him as a pure spirit. Meeting Eytukan (Wes Studi) and Mo'at (C. C. H. Pounder), the leaders of the Omaticaya clan, who are also Neytiri’s parents, Jake presents himself as a warrior "dreamwalker", a term the Na’vi used to call the avatar hybrids, with his intention to learn from them. Eytukan and Mo’at agree to teach Jake, making a reluctant Neytiri his tutor. From that day on, Jake spends his time learning the ways and culture of the Na’vi warriors, while jumping back to his original human body to report to Parker and Quaritch on information regarding the aliens. Grace arranges the movement of the avatar team to a remote camp in the Hallejuiah Mountains after finding out from Dr. Max Patel that Jake has been having regular communications with Quaritch about the Na'vi. In his avatar form, Jake learns how to bond and control his flying mountain banshee, while gaining respect and admiration from the Na’vi, his relationship with Neytiri continuing to grow, but also earning the jealousy and annoyance of Tsu'tey (Laz Alonso), Neytiri’s betrothed and next in line to be the clan leader. Reporting back to Quaritch, the Colonel wants Jake to begin his plan to convince the tribe to leave the Hometree, but Jake is now reluctant and weary of his fellow humans to exploit the moon’s resources. He tells Quaritch that he will attempt to convince the tribe once he is made part of the People, a ceremony granting the greatest honor to an avatar. That night, Jake undergoes the ceremony where Eytukan considers him as one of their own and made part of the People, with Grace and Neytiri looking on. Jake is now part of the Omaticaya clan, and with this he can choose his mate; he and Neytiri choose each other and spend that night mating at the Tree of Voices, and they are now mated for life. When Jake and Neytiri awake, they encounter several bulldozers, sent by the RDA, destroying the nearby forests. In his attempt to stop them, Jake destroys one of the machine’s camera arrays. Returning to the Hometree, Tsu'tey confronts him for mating with Neytiri. Before anything else can happen, Jake and Grace are suddenly sent back to their human bodies when soldiers sent by Quaritch arrive and open their link units to take them back by force. Quaritch and Parker have seen footage of Jake destroying the bulldozer’s cameras and have checked his entry logs, indicating him as losing interest to participate in the plan as well as committing possible treason. Grace tells an unbelieving Parker that the trees and plant life make up a huge network which connects the spiritual consciousness of all life, including the Na’vi, and must not be destroyed. Given a chance to attempt a final plea to the tribe to leave their home, Jake and Grace return to their avatar forms but the Na'vi refuse to listen after Jake reveals he was sent by his superiors to convince them to move. They are bound and labelled as traitors by the Na'vi who intend to defend themselves. A large strike force led by Quaritch destroys the Hometree, firing incendiary rounds that topple it to the ground, while killing large numbers of the tribe, despite their attempts to retaliate. Mo’at releases Jake and Grace from their bonds and pleads them to save her tribe. Eytukan is killed in the destruction, leaving Neytiri devastated. She tells Jake to stay away when he tries to comfort her. In the chaos, Jake and Grace are sent back to their original bodies to be placed under arrest for treason, along with Norm, who tried to stop the military from disabling their avatar forms. Trudy Chacon rescues the avatar team from prison and flies them to safety, however Grace is shot by Quaritch when he attempts to stop them from leaving the colony. The team has the camp container holding the avatar transfer pods sent near the Tree of Souls, where the remaining Omaticaya tribe has fled to safety. Jake makes his intention to redeem himself in the eyes of the Na’vi and successfully tames and controls a great leonopteryx, an enormous flying creature related to the banshee, making him the sixth Toruk Makto in Na'vi history. Jake makes a plea to Mo’at to save Grace from dying. This is done by trying to have her consciousness transferred permanently into her avatar form, using the Tree of Souls, before her human body expires. However, it is too late, as Grace is too weak to be transferred. Before she passes away, she tells Jake that she’s seen Eywa and the holy entity does exist. Following Grace's death, he asks Tsu’tey, who has been made clan leader, and the entire tribe to stand with him and face the humans. Having earned back the tribe’s trust, Jake makes plans to join with other clans to strike back at the human forces. Surveying the Na’vi, Quaritch learns that other clans have converged with the Omaticaya at the Tree of Souls and decides to destroy them and their holy ground to put an end to their defiance once and for all. The night before the battle, Jake appeals to Ewya to fight along side the Na'vi, asking her to look into Grace's memories of Earth. A huge military fleet commandeered by Quaritch approach the Tree of Souls, beginning the Assault on the Tree of Souls. Thousands of Na’vi warriors led by Jake and Tsu’tey take to the skies and attack the fleet, causing huge losses on both sides. Neytiri is knocked off her banshee and flees the military ground forces, while Norm’s avatar is shot, forcing him to jump back to his real body and continue the fight as a human. Tsu’tey makes a valiant attempt to take down the shuttle carrying the explosives, but is shot and falls to the forest below. Trudy makes a valiant attempt to protect Jake from Quaritch's Dragon, but is outgunned and killed. When all things seem bleak, the native wildlife of Pandora strikes back in force, seemingly responding to Jake's earlier plea to Eywa for help. The ground and aerial troops are scattered by the wildlife, while the shuttle carrying the explosives is destroyed before it reaches the Tree of Souls. During the wildlife's attack on the ground, a thanator approaches Neytiri and offers her to ride it. She accepts by bonding with it. Jake manages to bring down Quaritch’s gunship, but the Colonel manages to get into his AMP suit and escape the ship's destruction. Finding the camp containing the avatar pods by chance, Quaritch attempts to destroy Jake’s body but Neytiri and her thanator attack him. However, Quaritch kills the thanator with his AMP and is about to kill Neytiri when Jake arrives to challenge him. As they fight, Jake destroys the AMP’s life support and canopy but is caught in the mech’s grip. Neytiri saves Jake by planting two arrows into Quaritch’s chest, killing the Colonel. The camp is damaged during Quaritch's attack and leaks deadly Pandoran air, leaving Jake's human body almost dying from the poisonous air until Neytiri helps him put on his exopack. At this moment, Jake says to Neytiri "I See you", the traditional Na'vi greeting. Neytiri begins to shed tears of joy and says it back to him. The words take on an entirely new meaning as Jake is in his human form. Having put an end to the military's attack, the Na'vi round up the remaining RDA personnel to be sent back to Earth, never to return, while allowing a select group to stay with them on Pandora, which includes Jake, Norm, the avatar team and many other RDA defectors. Jake decides to stay in his avatar form forever, and concludes his final entry log of his experiences on his birthday. Returning to the Tree of Souls, he undergoes the consciousness transfer from his human body to his avatar form, and awakens to a new life as a Na'vi. Trivia ◾The film is rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking, according to commercials on air. It is James Cameron's third film to receive this rating (with Titanic and The Abyss). ◾Avatar was the first film to feature the new 20th Century Fox logo, which is animated by Blue Sky Studios, the makers of Ice Age (2002). It was according to trailers and commercials. ◾The major part of the film takes place in August 2154, 200 years after James Cameron's birth (* 16. August 1954). ◾President Obama watched Avatar on Thursday, December 31, 2009 with his family. ◾Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time. Taking inflation into account, it ranks 14th.